From today's Salon. Made me stop and think

[Kilgore]

Good piece on the state of today's Democratic Party.


http://www.salon.com/2016/04/14/hey_democrats_stop_gloating_your_party_is_imploding_right_before_your_eyes_too/


"To put it more affirmatively, Bernie Sanders hasn’t moved the Democratic base to the left. He’s revealed a base that has always been there, one that is tired of accepting “the lesser of two evils” as an electoral argument."

[Armstead]

1. Exactly -- Bernie reflects something much bigger

[Avalux]

2. YES. I'm that base!!

Perfect statement on those of us who are demanding more than that from the Democratic party.

[revbones]

5. As am I. This is why we are thankful for Bernie

and why many won't support Hillary in the general. We're not the go-along-to-get-along base of modern day Tories supporting the establishment.

[djean111]

3. Perfectly stated. And I am NOT going the Third Way way. Whatever it takes. n/t

[Dem2]

4. I like what you quoted there

It's true and I hope Bernie is the one to help the Democratic party move back to a more left-liberal place.

[pangaia]

6. They've (we've) always been here.

It's just that a lot of us/them had just given up.....
..................until........


..................you know what.....

[Buzz Clik]

7. Does Sanders understand what it is going to take to initiate and complete his three big projects?

• Break up a bunch of banks
  
• Single payer, universal health care
  
• Free college tuition

These are great issues that appeal to his base, and that base is mostly on the left (though a lot don't identify as such). But can he make this work when standing on the left of the spectrum and needing to convince Congress to go along with him? Does he have an inkling of the challenges?

Yes, he's been in Congress for a long time, but he initiated less than 10 bills, and only three passed. The sum of his efforts don't begin to resemble the task he has set for himself.

Personally, I want someone who gets it.

[daleanime]

11. And by "gets it" you mean......

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[Buzz Clik]

12. Ba da bing

[lagomorph777]

15. Obviously the plan is not to cooperate with a GOP Congress...

...the plan is to get them fired. It's called coattails. Combined with Trump's negative coattails, it's a pretty good plan!

[Buzz Clik]

18. Sweep all the non-cooperative Republicans out of Congress. Interesting plan.

[lagomorph777]

24. Probably not all of them :-)

Just enough to put them back in the minority where they belong. Something more proportional to the actual demographic they represent.

[Loudestlib]

20. Bernie is an activist at heart.

He knows that the system is rigged and he's never said that he plans to go it alone. His plan is to lead the people in protest until the things we need get fixed.

Will it work? I don't know, but I do know that even with a great guy like Obama and a mostly democratic congress little has changed in the daily lives of Americans. I'm willing to give him a shot, the alternative is that nothing changes, nothing is fixed, and people keep on hurting.

[Buzz Clik]

21. Thank you for a reasonable answer.

[Martin Eden]

32. Bernie Sanders hasn't set task "for himself"

He's said repeatedly this has to be accomplished with a political revolution of engaged voters.

Should the richest country on earth which likes to consider itself the "greatest" have universal health insurance, free tuition at public colleges, and financial regulation to break up banks that are too big to fail and put the entire economy at risk?

If you answer no to that question, vote for Hillary Clinton.

If you think we should have the things that some other advanced countries have, what you need to "get" is that it will never come to pass if the effort is never made.

The only way to get it done is to vote the obstructionists out of office. It won't happen overnight. The 2016 election is just a start, but we finally have a presidential contender who has lighted a spark under millions of voters including our country's youth upon who the future depends.

NOW is the time for them to learn they have the ability to change our country and the world for the better.

You would teach them the lesson of The Borg, that resistance is futile.

[Buzz Clik]

33. Engaged voters don't pass legislation in Congress. As much as I appreciate your revolutionary jargon

... it is irrelevant in this case.

[Martin Eden]

34. Their representatives do. That's how a functional democracy works.

Did you not get the part about voting the obstructionists out of office?

[Buzz Clik]

35. What you're suggesting is not a plan -- it's a dream.

Sanders, by distancing himself from the Democratic establishment and all his Democratic colleagues, has done nothing to bollster the ranks in Congress. He will be facing a solidly Republican House that will want nothing to do with his expensive programs.

All of this loops back to my original comment: Sanders has no idea what he's getting into.

[Martin Eden]

36. It's a movement, which is absolutely necessary for any meaningful change

MLK expressed a Dream in 1963. It didn't happen overnight and it's still a work in progress, but much progress has been made. He said the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. To that I will add it is necessary for The People, with long term commitment, determination, and effort, to do the bending.

Your comments are indeed looping back, in a useless circle of capitulation and surrender to the status quo. The Democratic Party establishment is the problem, not the solution. Our Party must be dragged back to service The People it ostensibly represents. If it takes an independent Democratic Socialist to lead the effort, so be it.

If you value economic and social justice, join the effort. If not, support Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

[RiverLover]

8. What will lesser evilism look like in 2016?

........MANY PEOPLE who agree with every argument raised above against supporting Clinton may still decide to vote for her--if only to prevent a Trump or Cruz from wreaking immediate damage on the tattered social welfare state and on civil liberties. Like the proverbial atheist who, wanting to hedge their bets against the possibility of an afterlife, asks to receive last rites before dying, many people will cast a vote for the lesser evil, just in case.

The fear of the greater evil is understandable. But is voting for the lesser of two evils really a strategy to even win "breathing space" to organize movements from below?

Consider Democrat Lyndon Johnson's election as a "peace candidate" in 1964. He was running against the reactionary and enthusiastically pro-war Republican Barry Goldwater, so many left voices decided to go "Half the way with LBJ." But once Johnson was elected, he escalated the war in Vietnam beyond anyone's worst nightmares.

Those who voted for the lesser evil to stop the greater evil got a combination of both.

That outcome is more typical than not, as U.S. socialist Hal Draper explained in an important article titled "Who Going to Be the Lesser Evil in '68?" Draper referenced what he called the "classic case of lesser evilism": The 1932 election in Germany, when the Social Democrats encouraged a vote for extreme conservative Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg to defeat Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party:

So the Lesser Evil, Hindenburg, won; and Hitler was defeated. Whereupon President Hindenburg appointed Hitler to the chancellorship, and the Nazis started taking over...the people voted for the Lesser Evil and got both [the greater and lesser evil]...This is exactly why 1932 is the classic case of the Lesser Evil, because even when the stakes were this high, even then, voting for the Lesser Evil meant historic disaster.

Draper's example is a dramatic one, but it illustrates the importance of understanding that the Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same "property" party--and that they operate as such.

What about issues like abortion rights on which there are real differences between the two parties? For example, Democrats are at least committed to maintaining abortion as a legally available option for women, whereas the Republicans are committed to outlawing it.

Within the limited scope of the question, that much is true. But supporting Democrats just because they aren't as bad as Republicans demonstrates the poverty of expectations among liberals. Democrats like Hillary Clinton are responsible for giving up so much ground to the right on the issue of reproductive rights, which at every step has enabled the anti-abortion fanatics to push for more.

Plus there is the question of how legal abortion was won in the first place. The U.S. Supreme Court was packed with conservative appointees when it overturned laws banning abortion with its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision--and Richard Nixon, an ardent opponent of choice, occupied the White House. So what happened? The Supreme Court felt the pressure of thousands of women and men demonstrating for abortion rights in the preceding years.

As Draper notes elsewhere in his essay, when Democratic politicians are assured that the party's more liberal base will vote for them anyway, they spend most of their time moving to the right to win votes there. Thus, Clinton and her surrogates have already talked up a strategy of bringing "moderate Republicans" repulsed by Trump into the Democratic "big tent.".................

http://socialistworker.org/2016/03/30/what-will-lesser-evilism-look-like

[daleanime]

13. Amen....

[Dragonfli]

19. If you vote the lesser of two evils you might as well vote Cthulhu 2016

Evil cannot be extinguished by evil, only consumed eventually by the greater evil and since Hillary is the lesser evil, she will be consumed and make even greater the great evil that is the immortal Deity!



[font size="4"; color="red"][center]Cthulhu 2016 [/center][/font]

because no matter which lesser evil you choose (if you choose evil at all) the greater evil will only consume it and run things anyway! Lets cut out the ceremonial middle-man (or woman) and get on with the inevitable destruction and mayhem!

Vote Cthulhu which is the greatest evil if you like evil at all, why not, he will only consume all lesser evils and run things regardless.

[Avalon Sparks]

38. Great post River

Especially the last bolder point.

[Trust Buster]

9. Then, why are you losing ? How could the Party always been there when young voters make up

the biggest portion of your ranks ? I think no other candidate, Democrat or whatever Sanders is, has so shamefully promised such a vast level of wealth redistribution through policies that he knows won't see the light of day in Congress. This is not a revolution. It's a failed smoke and mirrors campaign IMO.

[beedle]

17. The reason?

1 - There was no alternative candidate until late in the pre-primary season
2 - No one was paying attention that there was an alternative candidate until in many cases it was too late to get involved voting wise
3 - Media did all they could to play the Democratic primary as a fait accompli for Clinton

But don't worry, if Hillary wins, Hillary will do what Hillary does, triangulate and fight for her corporate pay masters ... Bernie's revolution is not going anywhere .. we know that the only thing that is stopping Bernie this time is a system stacked against allowing his legion of supporters from having a say at the voting booths, but we 'live and learn', and that bullshit suppression will not work next time.

Assuming 2020 is the next chance, the rules will be known, the campaign will start much earlier and no one will be locked out from voting due to technicalities; The MSM will be even weaker and less relevant in 4 years, they will not be able to play the horse race as the most important thing (not that it will favor the Establishment come 2020,) they will not be able to steal the news cycle with minor misuse of words, or bogus and debunked headlines.

The Democratic party itself will be luck to survive past 2020 let along the corporate sellout that are the Establishment Democratic party of 2016.

[ky_dem]

37. That's my biggest hope - that my fellow Millennials take this election as an object lesson

and remember that we are potentially the largest voting block.

[Avalon Sparks]

39. Who will lead it?

That's what worry me.

Bernie is one in a trillion.

Will Warren take the baton?

[lagomorph777]

26. Bernie is not trying to start redistribution of wealth; he's trying to stop it.

Our Dem "representatives" have been playing along with the GOP upward redistribution of wealth for too long. It's time to start fighting back in the class war we have been losing for decades.

[firebrand80]

10. So, his argument is that because some Dems prefer Bernie

then the party is "imploding?"

[lagomorph777]

14. Exactly!!!

The party left us behind when they swerved to the right. We didn't suddenly become billionaires and decided we like transferring our wealth to the top.

[CoffeeCat]

16. The latest CBS poll indicates that 30 percent of Sanders supporters won't vote for Hillary

that number has grown throughout the campaign.

The establishment is in complete denial. They've seen similar "We won't vote for the nominee" themes in past primaries. They erroneously assume that we will be folded into the fray. Like every other year. Anyone who was paying attention would have noticed that huge paradigm shifts began happening in the Democratic party in January. Trump and the Republican troubles overshadowed what was happening, but it was there. The Republican mess was a volcano--with its damage visible and explosive. What's happened in the Democratic party is like an earthquake. The fault lines underneath have been moving and pressure has been building. An inevitable seismic shock will happen, but those who are so power hungry that they ignore the obvious problems--will be surprised when a political earthquake hits the party. They won't have the numbers.


It's hubris that prevents them from seeing what has happened in the Democratic party. And it's the DNC's fault for offering up a candidate that is warmed-up 2008 leftovers that half of the party cannot stand. They had to rig it for her with the outrageously unfair debate schedule, establishment super delegates who refuse to listen to their constituents, disgusting race-baiting tactics, accusations of sexism, David Brock dirty games, the often repeated "BernieBro" bullshit and loads of dirty tricks and voter suppression along the way.

Furthermore, there are untold numbers of people, like myself, who have been impacted personally by the cheating and dirty games of the Clinton campaign. There is video of the Chair of the Bernie delegation revealing that the Hillary Chair told Bernie supporters that they could go home and that the County Convention was finished. That was a lie. I was recently told, from another witness, that she heard the Hillary Chair tell Bernie supporters to leave. When she called him out on it, he said, "If your people are stupid enough to fall for it, that's your problem."

Enough. Is. Enough.

I say with clear eyes and absolutely no guilt, "No thanks."

[JEB]

22. Ignored and taken for granted or bashed for too long. nt

[randr]

23. The RNC and the DNC are enemies of the State

Trump and Bernie have exposed the rotten underbelly and one of them will be the next President

[lagomorph777]

27. Friends of the State; but enemies of the people!

[RiverLover]

29. Very true.

But not right & it MUST stop.

[vintx]

25. FUCKING YES!

[me b zola]

28. K&R

[Umbral18]

30. It's not a matter of accepting 'the lesser of 2 evils', I've had it with being used and abused.

They want votes and money and all they give in return is a handful of flatulence.

[Avalon Sparks]

40. I'm with you!

[Myrina]

31. K&R

n/t